How do I switch from Swisscom to Hostpoint?

Would you like to transfer your domain, website and e-mail addresses from Swisscom to Hostpoint? We’ll show you how in this article – one step at a time. You will also find instructions on how to migrate your website created with HomepageTool to Sites, Hostpoint’s website builder.

Which Hostpoint products are right for me?

Hostpoint offers an extensive range of domain, web hosting and e-mail services:

• Domains: Discover the wide variety of domains and useful additional packages such as Domain Shield on our product page.
• Web hosting: You can choose between three different web hosting plans (Standard, Smart, Business).
• Website builder: Sites – Hostpoint’s modern and user-friendly website builder – is available in different versions (Starter/Limited/Full version) from as little as CHF 9.00 per month. With Smart and Business web hosting, you receive Sites Limited, which allows you to create a website with up to six pages – completely free of charge. The full version is suitable for more pages and functions. You can find all the information you need on the Sites product page.
• E-mail: All our web hosting services include an unlimited number of e-mail inboxes. But even if you don’t need web hosting, or if you require more storage space, you can still use our E-mail & Cloud Office products.

The following applies to all our products and services:

• Free support seven days a week (over the phone, by e-mail or over WhatsApp)
• Everything in Switzerland: our head office, all our employees, the entire server infrastructure and therefore your data too are located exclusively in Switzerland.
• Maximum performance thanks to 100% SSD web hosting
• Your data is backed up several times a day and is stored for up to 180 days.

You can select the products you need directly during the ordering process. However, you can also add extra products at any time in the Hostpoint Control Panel or on our website.

Domains, e-mail addresses and websites are usually transferred together, so this guide covers the transfer of all three services. If you do not want to use all of the services or transfer them to us, you can simply skip the relevant steps.

Domains

1. To transfer domains to Hostpoint, you need a “transfer code” (also known as an “authorization code”) for each domain. You can find the transfer code in the Swisscom Control Panel, or you can get it directly from Swisscom Customer Service.
2. Order the domain here on our website and enter the transfer code during the ordering process. Follow this guide to do this.
   Info: Note: The transfer of .ch domains takes just a few minutes. The transfer of other top-level domains (such as “.com” domains) can take up to five working days.

E-mail accounts

Create e-mail addresses

Once your domain has been successfully transferred, you can create your e-mail addresses with Hostpoint. To do this, log into the Hostpoint Control Panel and follow this guide.

Switch mail server from Swisscom to Hostpoint

1. Log into the Swisscom Customer Center.
2. Open “Domain Management” > “DNS Zone” and add the MX entry below. Remove all the other entries of the “MX” type.

   Domain	Type	IN	TTL	Value/Host name
   @	MX	IN	300	mx1.mail.hostpoint.ch
   @	MX	IN	300	mx2.mail.hostpoint.ch

3. Add the TXT entry below. If a similar entry with Swisscom data already exists, remove it.
   

   Domain	Type	IN	TTL	Value/Host name
   @	TXT	IN	300	v=spf1 redirect=spf.mail.hostpoint.ch

→ Your e-mails will now arrive in the newly created e-mail accounts over the Hostpoint mail servers. It can take up to three hours for this change to be published worldwide. 

Transfer e-mails

Next, transfer all of the e-mails from your previous e-mail account with Swisscom to your new e-mail account with Hostpoint. Use our free e-mail migration service as described in this guide. The migration service only applies to e-mails, not to contacts (address books) and calendars.

At this point, we recommend that you back up all of the data (e-mails, calendar and contacts) in your e-mail program so that your calendar and contacts are also retained. Follow this guide to do this.

Reconfigure e-mail program

Once all of your e-mails have been successfully transferred, set up your new Hostpoint e-mail addresses in your e-mail program. Use our e-mail wizard to do this. Then import your backed-up contacts and calendars back into your e-mail program.

Synchronize your contacts and calendar with Microsoft Outlook

Microsoft Outlook works perfectly for retrieving e-mails from Hostpoint servers. But, unfortunately, Outlook’s calendar and contact functionality is only limited to Microsoft servers. There are free add-ons so that you can still use your calendar and contacts in Outlook with your Hostpoint e-mail address. These act as “translators” and enable Outlook to work with international standards for calendars (CalDAV) and contacts (CardDAV), just as other e-mail programs do. Follow this guide to set up calendar and contact synchronization.

Website/web hosting

Website created with HomepageTool

If you created your website with the “HomepageTool” website builder from Swisscom, you can import it into Hostpoint’s “Sites” website builder. Follow this guide to do this. The menu structure, texts and images are automatically adopted during import. Dynamic content such as contact forms must be added to Sites at a later date.

To ensure that your existing website with Swisscom continues to work, first of all create your new website with Hostpoint on the test domain provided by the server (e.g. uvisovax.myhostpoint.ch). When you are satisfied with the website, you can publish it on your actual domain. Follow these steps:

1. Transfer technical control of your domain to the Hostpoint Control Panel by switching the name servers to Hostpoint. Follow this guide to do this. The switchover can take up to 48 hours.
   → As soon as the name server switchover is complete, your previous website will no longer be accessible.
2. Switch the website created with Sites over from the test domain (myhostpoint.ch) to the correct domain. Follow this guide to do this.

Website created with a CMS

If your website was created with a CMS such as WordPress, Joomla, Typo3 or Drupal, you can pack it into a file with the corresponding plugins and unpack it again with Hostpoint. As an example, you can find the WordPress guide here.

After you have carried out all the steps according to the guide, you still need to switch the name servers to Hostpoint. Follow this guide to do this. The switchover can take up to 48 hours.

Congratulations! You have transferred your domains, website and e-mail addresses from Swisscom to Hostpoint.